Inarticulate
by Orchid Falls
Summary: Leo normally got straight to the point on most matters, especially where they concerned lecturing Elliot - unless he wanted him to actually think about something and work out the answer for himself. ElliotxOz


**Disclaimer: **I don't own it and all that jazz.

**A/n's: **Written for the request: ElliotxOz, Even though the brat pisses him off a lot, Elliot secretly craves for his company. Obvious denial is obvious. Spoilers for chapter 25 to 28.

* * *

**Inarticulate **

The bastard actually thought that his actions were sensible. _That_ was the crazy part. Like his ridiculous thoughts were noble or something. Throwing his life away as if it didn't matter, like that was a character trait worth having; leaving everyone you loved behind for some stupid, and, most probable pointless cause. Which, when you thought about it (and the brat wouldn't) could no doubt have been solved in some simple, easy way if it was just given a seconds thought, instead of a willing body thrown in the way wishing to end its life in the process.

He hated those kind of self-sacrificing idiots.

Elliot sighed and then huffed, running a hand through his hair and shaking his head at his annoyance.

"Elliot, what now?" Leo put down the book he was trying to read and threw his charge a look that clearly meant he was being annoying.

One of those looks that made his forehead crinkle into too many lines for Elliot to count. Elliot liked to call it the sit down or spit it out before I smack you look.

"Nothing," he replied, gritting his teeth and pressing down so hard that they clicked together loudly.

Leo's look increased, his eyebrows almost disappearing in the crinkles; and Elliot wondered if they'd ever be seen again or were doomed to be lost for eternity in the multiple folds of skin.

"Nothing?" the boy repeated, clearly not believing his master for a second.

Elliot thought there were downfalls to having known somebody your whole life, and this was definitely one of them. The fact that he couldn't use a threatening Nightray tone or look to shut Leo up was excruciating.

Instead, Elliot tried his best to downplay the situation, he nodded, but the nod was too forceful and _that look_ was still not disappearing.

"Fine!" He threw his hand up in the air, as if he could bat away the annoyance and maybe clap Reo's head along the way.

Leo side-stepped. "It's that kid, that strange brat!"

"Oh." The word was a little drawn out and Elliot suddenly became suspicious.

"Oh?"

What was that supposed to mean?

Leo sighed and picked back up the book he had been trying to read, his fingers flicking through the pages until he found the point he had been up to, taking his time as if Elliot wasn't waiting.

"Yes, oh."

Elliot felt his annoyance rising. "Which _means_?" Leo normally got straight to the point on most matters, especially where they concerned lecturing Elliot, unless he wanted him to actually think about something and work out the answer for himself, and he was already thinking about the so-called Oz too much for his own goddamn liking.

The stupid short idiot.

Leo spared him a quick glance, his eyes returning back to the book as soon as he started speaking, "Only that it's been a few days now and you're still thinking about your encounter with Master Vessalius."

Elliot felt the tick beginning in his cheek. _Master Vessalius, _as if the brat actually was that kid - dead or locked in the abyss, run away from the crazy, hero worshipped Vessalius lifestyle, or whatever the hell had happened to him. And encounter? That made it seem like some sort of trashy roman--

His voice was quiet and polite, almost lethal when he asked, "Which means?"

Leo seemed not to hear the tone, or at least he pretended not to notice, and Elliot was proud of the fact that he was able to keep his feet from tapping out his increasing impatience.

The messy haired boy slowly turned the page of his book, as if Elliot's rage wasn't simmering above him, "Hmm? Oh, nothing."

Elliot laughed, once, twice, but there was no humour in it. Clearly he just had to stop thinking about the brat and his stupidity.

"The stupid brat. You're right; I shouldn't be thinking about him-it, you know... what happened. And-"

He cleared his throat and Leo made no protest at his verbal rampage except to flick to the next page of his book.

Elliot moved away before he did something drastic, like kick Leo and the stupid book he kept reading, and caught the glance of his reflection in the mirror, the way that his skin was flushed and splotchy; and he was hot and obviously not blushing, but just flustered, and what the hell was _nothing_ supposed to mean anyway?

The stupid non-Vessalius short idiot.

* * *

"You're staring at Ada Vessalius."

It was a statement, and Elliot still found himself wanting to provide some kind of an answer, or excuse, but answer sounded better and less like he'd been caught out creepily staring; a good one, one that would make Leo have to think for a second.

He placed down the fork he had been using, even if it had been dangling uselessly from his fingers for the better part of a good ten minutes, picking up the serviette to his left and dabbing the corners of his lips, "I was just thinking."

"Hmmm."

Elliot grimaced and felt his teeth clenching because god, Leo could be so exasperating.

"Not about the _Lady_ Vessalius though."

He spluttered, using his serviette to try and hide the movement, yet he wasn't quite fast enough and one of Leo's eyebrows rose surreptitiously.

"Maybe you should just ask her."

"Ask her?"

Because yes, he had been staring, and okay, maybe he needed to practice the art of not being so damn obvious, but Leo noticed _everything. _

As if to prove a point, Leo sighed, a long drawn out breath that came out terribly condescending, "About Master Oz Vessalius."

"I wasn't-"

Leo sniffed, taking a sip of his tea and Elliot huffed.

"I wouldn't ask her anything." And Leo still kept calling the brat Oz Vessalius. "You shouldn't call him that."

"Oz Vessalius?" he paused and Elliot was about to retort with yes when, "Or Master Oz Vessalius?"

Elliot would swear he saw a slight smirk start to curl on Leo's smug looking mouth. His fingers itched to strangle something, preferably Leo, but he restrained himself by flexing them into two tensely curled fists.

"Both! You shouldn't be calling him Master, or Oz _Vessalius_," his voice ended in a tightly rushed whisper. After all it wouldn't do well for anyone to overhear a Nightray heir talking about the Vessalius', especially one that had disappeared under mysterious circumstances ten years ago.

"Well you did ask Master Oz his name and that is the one he provided us with."

Elliot's chair squeaked loudly, his fists slamming on the table and his breath blowing his hair into all sorts of crazy directions.

Leo appeared nonplussed at the outbreak, "You should calm down and drink some tea. Everybody's staring."

Elliot looked and immediately sat down, smoothing his hair back into place and picking up his tea cup and saucer. It was empty. He stood up to refill his cup and noticed that Ada Vessalius was right next to the tea pot with no sign of moving.

"You can fill mine up while you're at it."

Elliot seethed, "I believe that you are the servant here of the two of us."

"I know. I believe that Master would benefit from doing his own chores and the tasks of others from time to time though. Both learning and humbling," he ended the sentence with a smile and Elliot walked away just so that he wasn't tempted to start screaming.

Ada Vessalius seemed to be hesitating. Deciding between the lemon tea on offer or the kind labelled peach and elderberry; her fingers, small slim hands - and Oz's had been bigger, stronger in a wiry sense that contained hidden muscle – floating between the two as if fate itself would decree to her which one was better.

He'd been thinking about how similar the pair looked, or didn't. If there was any truth to the idiot's claims that he was in fact a Vessalius, and a long ago dead one at that.

Maybe the brat was just simply deluded, or the crazy killing, stripping lunatic had knocked a whole lot of sense out of him when she'd been shoving herself against him?

Ada was still deliberating and he took the chance to study the girl from closer up. Her hair was of course longer, but it seemed a shade or two darker, more of a golden hue than _Oz's _paler flaxen. Their eyes were a similar colour, the Vessalius gene bright and proud, and he would have to look up how common the eye colour was outside of their family. Not too common he reckoned, considering he'd never seen the colour outside of the Vessalius household; pictures he'd seen of the family in books, and the rare times he had been included to one of the official Duke household meetings when the Vessalius family had also been invited. A rare occurrence considering the two households couldn't be in the same vicinity together for longer than five minutes without beginning to bitch at each other.

Ada coughed quietly at him and he realised that he had been caught out again, staring.

"Em, is everything alright, Elliot?"

"W-what?" He stammered, and that wasn't just the humiliating part because he could feel the beginnings of his face quickly reddening.

"Shut up!" Ada winced. "And don't call me my name without some form of proper prefix!"

Ada visibly wilted, and there was yet another difference, Oz would have looked at him bored, or maybe given him that stupidly aggravating smile of his. The one where his lips quirked at the sides and it made his whole stance appear to be laughing.

It was so, so... irritating. He was rattling the tea cups.

"Ah, I'm sorry," she blinked, and appeared both confused and intimidated at the same time, staring at the shaking crockery as if he might snap and throw it at her.

"You should be," he looked away from her face, and it was then that he noticed she didn't have the same thin patch of freckles that Oz had had playing across the top of his nose.

"Would you, would you like some lemon tea?" She gestured to the tea pot and then back to the two tea cups he was carrying. "Or maybe you would like some-"

"I'm fine."

Ada blinked and now she was the one doing the staring.

Clumsily, he placed the two cups down and moved to pick up the pot just so that he didn't need to come up with an excuse as to why he had come over in the first place. But then he had come to fill up the tea, hadn't he? There was no other insane reason.

Elliot felt the blush on his cheeks rising.

"Are you sure you're alright? You look a little-"

"Fine!"

He slammed the tea pot back down a little too roughly and hot liquid came spilling out onto his fingers. He winced, watching Ada frown as she clearly thought she was dealing with some kind of angry, hothead lunatic. The difference here was that he would probably have wound up Oz enough by now for him to actually call him some kind of weirdo.

He grabbed the two cups and turned his back to her abruptly, taking the tea back to Leo and practically dropping it into his lap as he slammed it down onto the table.

"So you didn't take the opportunity to ask her then?"

Elliot could feel his lips tightening into a thin line of unhappiness.

He began to rattle off the differences he'd noticed. "She's taller than him; if he was her older brother shouldn't he have been a little, well, older? She doesn't have his freckles," he moved two fingers to swipe across the bridge of his nose. "Her whole demeanour is different, he was... he had something about him," like a fire that fizzled inside of him, and sprung up and burned at all of these random moments. Or at least he had once Elliot had hit and berated him. Just when it had seemed he was out for the count, the brat had sprung back up and just kept on going.

And sure, maybe Elliot had kind of admired the way that Oz had stood up to him; the way that his shoulders had lined up and it had made him seem just that much older. Ada, he just had to look at and she seemed visibly shaken. Oz had had spirit, and maybe he did need a good, swift kick up the backside, but Elliot could see that there was at least potential.

Leo wasn't blinking.

They had had a different smell too, Ada's light and floral whilst fake Oz's had been more masculine, like a heady earth and musky smell that still came out just as appealing.

He wasn't saying that though, he didn't want things to come out complicated and too confusing.

"And their hair is just slightly different, of course the style, but the colour too." And Elliot wanted to say Oz's was slightly shinier but he kept his mouth shut, waiting.

Leo nodded, blowing lightly on the tea before raising it to his mouth to take a quick sip.

"That is an awful lot to notice about Master Vessalius, after just the one brief meeting."

"I-" Elliot paused because it hadn't been that brief of a meeting and he'd spent an awful lot of it pressed up against Oz, fists holding his blazer and fingers scrunched up tightly in the folds of Oz's thin shirt. It was kind of hard not to notice the tiny, minute detail. Like the way Oz's breath had stuttered out of him when Elliot had said that there was no way in hell he would let the stupid short idiot die, at least not while he was still stood there alive and breathing.

"I always pay attention to detail."

"Of course you do, Master Elliot."

And how was it that when Leo used the correct prefix it sounded so damn patronising.

* * *

"Maybe I should write Gilbert a letter?"

Elliot chewed at the end of his pen tip thoughtfully, pulling it out of his mouth and tapping it against the side of his writing bureaux.

"Because you want to catch up or because you want to ask him questions about Master Oz Vessalius?"

Leo was still on the Master, Oz and Vessalius kick. As if it actually caused him pleasure to see his Master biting his lip in annoyance.

Elliot cleared his throat and waited out the beginnings of his frustration, pausing before answering, "He is one of my adopted brothers, and it is up to me as the legitimate heir to the Nightray house to try and begin our reparations."

"True. Though I'm sure your Father would do better in that case; and if you are going to go down that route, then surely contact with Master Vincent would also be proper etiquette."

Leo smiled and Elliot almost snapped the pen in his fingers.

Gilbert had always been a little shy and full of bluster; the nicer of his two adoptive brothers and always on hand to help out if Elliot, or even Leo had needed it. Vincent on the other hand had always been incredibly creepy, putting on that tightly wound up smile for the adults and leaving behind him a trail of mutilated dolls and their once upon a time innards of sad stuffing.

The fact that none of the attendants, or even his parents, had found that just the slightest bit strange had always been a mystery to them. Even Gilbert never mentioned it.

Elliot nodded, "Perhaps then you could hand deliver my message to dear brother Vincent?"

And then it was his turn to smile to himself as Leo kept suspiciously quiet and just stared at him blankly.

Pleased with the outcome, he took his pen properly back in hand and took out a sheaf of paper from inside one of his drawers. Elaborate script scrawling out Dear Gilbert and then - nothing...

He could dance around the subject, exchange the usual pleasantries and press of information about his school studies and health, maybe ask him what the hell he really had been thinking trying to get away with dressing up like a school student at his age. It wasn't as if he looked like he could pass as a teenager, and it was highly embarrassing considering he still represented the Nightray family. But what he really wanted to ask, because Leo was right, was what on earth all the business with the fake Vessalius kid was about, if Gilbert had gone crazy or fake Oz had somehow brainwashed him.

How did you write something like that to your half brother?

"Tell me everything you can about the marvellous Oz Vessalius."

"Leo!"

Elliot turned around, his face heating and his elbow hitting the bureaux and knocking over the stupidly placed ink pot; that in turn spilt all over both his letter and his clothing. His garbled cry of annoyance served no other purpose than to start Leo laughing.

Screeching back his chair, Elliot scrambled to his feet with as much dignity as he could still muster. What with the dripping ink, sodden sleeve and bright cheeks of crimson.

Slamming the door extra hard on his way out and wondering if it was still too late to get some kind of replacement servant. He could ask his Father, or maybe there was some way he could legally swap Leo.

* * *

It was probably about time that he started writing, or at least practicing something different.

Lacie seemed to be eternally stuck playing over and over again in his head. And along with his dreams, though they were terrifyingly different, it was beginning to get annoying.

The piece didn't yet seem quite perfect and sometimes there was a key or two off and he wondered if the right notes were written, or if his fingers were just slipping up completely by accident. Maybe a piano type instrument wasn't what the piece was really supposed to be played on, but then he'd heard it on a flute, violin and even an oboe – and it all still sounded just that little bit off kilter.

It didn't help matters that when he began once again from the beginning, he could imagine Oz's fingers digging hard into the skin of his shoulders. Nobody ever dared to grab Elliot Nightray in any way and Oz had just gotten in there, past his defence, and gripped him like it was his own goddamn given purpose.

The short brat had been strong too. There was a clear directness and passion behind his fingers, tightening their grip as Elliot had felt his anger start to threaten and bubble. Oz's hands had taken a swift hold of his collar and Elliot had never had any person dare grip him or touch him like that before, so damn unbelievably personal.

He huffed and took his hands off of his instrument and shoved them into his hair wildly. He was getting hot... as in angry, yes... angry – just thinking about it.

Oz's hands had shifted when Elliot had been able to get his breath back from the shock and then they'd brushed lightly against the side of his neck, almost tender, and then he'd looked at him with so much clear and downright personal desperation.

Idiot Oz!

Elliot stood up and shook out his head, swallowing great big breathfuls of air in an effort to clear out all of these silly and non-understandable emotions. Because they were, he didn't care what Leo tried to imply in that haughty know it all servant way of his.

God, this was all so frustrating.

He had slapped Oz's hand away; their skin meeting and shooting jolts of well, _something, _up and down Elliot's frozen body. And once he had gotten the brats hands off of his clothes and his _neck_, he had just looked at him like that, all lost, completely at a loss for words and broken.

All because of a simple and beautifully sad song that he'd written. And what did that mean?

He sat back down and placed his hands on the appropriate keys, allowing the soft notes of Lacie to drift through the room and out into the corridor. Leo had left him alone for just about an hour now, complaining that he was tapping out the song whilst he was eating, reading and even sleeping. Leaving Elliot with the stupid sentence of, "It isn't going to bring back Master Oz Vessalius, no matter how many times you continue to play it."

And of course Elliot had retorted that, "I believe I am entitled to practice my own goddamn song whenever I goddamn wish to!"

And Leo's lips had twisted up into that silly, stupid, self-righteous, know it all smirk he used only on special _teasing Elliot_ occasions, and Elliot had felt the all too familiar heat flash through him until it had felt like his face was on fire again.

All because of that stupid, short brat Oz Vessalius.

Just wait until the next time Elliot Nightray saw him.

* * *

**End.**

Comments and crit are as always mucho appreciated.


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